The fledgling field of nano-imprint technology has taken another small step forward. The first “nano-imprint templates” have been designed, just days after Motorola claimed that it has made 30 nm structures. The templates are for .25 micron geometries, but templates for 65 nm devices should eventually be available. The next hurdle will be to use nano-imprint technology to make actual working transistors and logic gates. Although nano-imprint technology is not yet considered an actual competitor to 157 nm lithography or EUV, recent delays in the rollout of both 157 and EUV mean that nano-imprint technology will have more time to become a viable competitor. Nano-imprint can theoretically print 10 nm features, which is as good as EUV. Several nano-imprint start-up companies have emerged, and appear to be having little difficulty getting funding. Considering how new this technology is, it has made remarkable progress.

Instead of using beams of light or electrons as in electron beam lithography, they instead use a physical template and PRESS the dedsign onto the wafer instead!

– by Peter

Geek and sponsors(4:18am EST Sat Mar 01 2003)Hey!

How much is Molecularimptint paying you to work as advertisers? There are a lot of other start-ups whithin the nano-area that should be mentioned before Molecular. – by Magnus

Nano-progress from Sweden(6:27am EST Sat Mar 01 2003)“Considering how new this technology is, it has made remarkable progress”. I say, check out Sweden's Obducat to find out what it means ()… – by Bjorn Again

I think bubbles are nearly a show stopper…(10:38am EST Sat Mar 01 2003)On a smooth surface, bubbles can be eliminated by gently enough dipping a “thing” in a liquid so that the wavefront of wetting is propagated by capillary action alone. The meniscus effect, if you will.

But a chip is extraordinarly rough on the nanoscale. There's just no way in hell that they're going to get trillions (and I'm not exagerating) of potential corners & gullies to be 100.00000000000000% bubble free.

Except if they process everything in a deep hard vacuum. You can't have “a bubble” if there's no other fluid (in this case, air) to fill it. Its true! There can be voids that look like bubbles (famous experiment: use a blender to 'homogonize' a half filled flask of oil in a hard vacuum. It becomes utterly white & milky with trillions of bubbles. Now, release the vacuum, letting air back in. AS FAST AS THE SPEED OF SOUND in the liquid, it collapses in to a totally transparent, bubble-free half-filled flask of oil again. Not a one of those trillions of vacuum-filled unbubbles remains.)

But there's other problems with hard vacuums and oils… namely, for the vacuum to be 'hard' enough, the oil will likely begin to boil. Darn.

Well, since most photolith is going to either argon-atmosphere or vacuum processing, it ought not to be much of a stretch.

If it is not an achilles heal though, the CLEANING step ought to be a bear though, since it might be needed many times in the course of processing (only the finest!) features of the chip.

Cheap imposter(9:48am EST Mon Mar 03 2003)Do you feel morally 'relieved', crapping thus? Scatalogical references aside, having not a whit of opinion to add, you 'cover your tracks' by using my handle. Well… so be it. The ripe odor of your imperiousness is self evident. – by GoatGuy

Nanoimprint Award Tokyo(9:59am EST Fri Mar 07 2003)The Swedish nanotechnology company Obducat has been rewarded with “Super Small Technology Award” at a nanotechnology fair in Tokyo.

– by Aulis

Swedish nanotechnology company Obducat (10:04am EST Fri Mar 07 2003)

Obducat receives order on three NIL-machines

– by Aulis

Re:I think bubbles are nearly a show stopper… (2:13pm EST Tue Jul 15 2003)What's the point of all the zeros after the %100? You can't get any better than %100. Maybe you should have put %99.999999999999. – by greenapple

To do 30 300 mm WPH, one needs to imprint one 300 mm wafer in 2 min. This seems only feasible with imprinting the whole wafer at once. This would require a nanoimprint mask that is huge..12 inch diameter or 18 inch square.